Sep
26
2012

Understudy

by Gary Sanderson

The mellow yellow glow from empty sunlit seed-heads glistening over a dense, light-green, chest-high timothy field makes it all the more beautiful to watch Chubby doing what Springer Spaniels are bred to do — locate and flush bird or beast with blissful enthusiasm from tangled cover. The furious sight and sound of thrashing brush highlighted by graceful bounds that lift the yearling male’s brown head and flashy white neck above it all, nose elevated, floppy ears pointing to the heavens, is a photo-op any shutterbug worth a lick would race to. Yes, monarchs are fluttering above the clover fields, sumacs are sporting their rusty red, and bird season is near, the anxiety building.

Signs of hunting season are everywhere. The chimney sweep’s come and gone, the woodshed’s stuffed, the furnace has been cleaned, and the yellows, oranges and purples are prominent in wetlands, thick along the borders. I even retrieved a few afghans out of storage to throw over my lap when waking early to read or perhaps scream expletives at reactionary talk-jocks Dennis and Callahan, or perhaps that wolf in sheep’s clothing, Morning Joe, he a leader of the holier-than-thou Clinton Inquisition panel that introduced me to our frightening Christian-right. I knew such creatures existed but far underestimated their clout before the Bill-and-Monica caper. Ever since, I have been wary of this hypocritical rabble, which doesn’t like men who think like me. I guess they’d call me secular progressive but, in fact, I’m way beyond that and quite proud of it. What I try to tell myself is that if other people were reading what I read, they would have similar worldviews. But I know that ain’t true. When you take an imbedded perspective into your reading, you can always make anything add up, even when it obviously doesn’t. Look at this diabolical Federalist Society of right-wing judges and lawyers; they support corporations and the greediest Wall Street thieves, vote Republican and laud the virtues of Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, two revolutionaries who would have run the fascists protecting the our most sinister corporations and polluters out of town covered in steaming black tar and riding a rail … if they were lucky. But that’s neither here nor there, back to Chubby, soon to embark on his first meaningful bird season. Just Wednesday morning I was thinking how, soon, when in the days to come I approach the kennel wearing my tattered Filson bibs, the dogs’ feet will barely hit the ground before flying like shoulder-to-air missiles into my truck-bed porta-kennels.

First, let me be clear: I don’t think my young dog is any better than others. We all enjoy our dogs and grow to understand, even adore, their idiosyncrasies. But I only know my own animals, and that’s what I write about. Like I have often told a good friend of mine who travels far and wide and has enjoyed great success on the national field-trial circuit, “I’m sure there are many good gun dogs out there, but I challenge you to find a better hunter” than Ringy or Lily or others I have owned over the years. His goals and mine are different. Field-trialers play a control game and train their dogs to the standard. I let my dogs freewheel, then read and follow them to the wing-shot, more of a wide-open free-for-all, my kinda game. Some prefer total control and obedience to command. Not me. I love busting loose, always have, and so do my dogs, most of whom have displayed imperfections here or there, none affecting results. It’s a simple formula: they hunt, I follow.

As for Chubby, well, to be honest, last year, tagging along while mother Lily, a finished 8-year-old gun dog, I wasn’t totally certain the little puppy had it. He was at first a little nervous about gunshots and never did challenge mom for flushes or retrieves, instinctively deferring and choosing a different direction. He did push out some wild flushes I could not bring down and, yes, others that fell from the sky on fulfilling snap shots, the bird always retrieved by dominant Lily. Little Chub-Chub, 6 months old for the start of the season, just wasn’t developmentally ready to challenge Mom, and, truthfully, he never did. Not once. Then, even this spring, whenever I’d throw something to retrieve, he’d start after it, Lily would growl him off and he’d just pull up short and let her retrieve it, whether in water or brush. That changed around mid-May. I’d drop the tailgate to release the dogs and Chubby would burst out, sprinting down the edge of a standing brown cornfield and quartering his way back to me, head high, flushing every available mourning dove and squirrel into trees and sending every rabbit scurrying under gnarly brush piles. If there was a turkey around, he’d find that, too, and send it t’other side of the Green River, day after day. Then came the hovering, scolding bobolinks, always great fun, then swooping swallows, even more entertaining and exhausting, followed by killdeers that emit that shrill screeching sound young Springers chase from one end of a field to the other, no quit. Yes, Chub-Chub displayed the same determination as his mother and the late Ringo, a wall-to-wall huntin’ dog.

Lately, it’s been rabbits every day, turkey broods now and then. He descends into Sunken Meadow and seeks them out with a passion that’s fun to watch. His father, Buddy, had the most picturesque running style of any Springer I’ve owned. The dog danced kangaroo-like through thick cover, curling those front legs under his breastbone and bouncing from one end of a thick covert to the other, an aristocratic sight to behold. Problem was that a handler’s error on his first retrieve had confused him and he never recovered, was always skittish about picking up a bird. Afraid this bad habit I could not cure may rub off on Chubby, I offered Buddy on Craig’s List the second or third day of last year’s upland bird season and literally had a good home for him in 20 minutes — the power of online classified ads newspapers bemoan.

Although Chubby does show traces of Buddy’s bouncing hind-leg jitterbug when closing in on his quarry, he attacks a covert more like Lily, a snorting, frolicking brush hog whose energy builds before climaxing in a final lusty leap after the tail feathers of an indignant ringneck. I’m sure Chubby’s flushing technique will differ some but be no less exciting to watch with a light European side-by-side in my hands. When Chubby knows he’s closing in, he literally bounces straight up as though off a pogo-stick, a pretty, athletic sight. A month or so back, busting through thick, tangled brush where Chubby’s been pestering  rabbits for months, I was walking along my beaten path through waist-high cover when he started bouncing 10 or 12 feet to my left. I heard something fleeing through the brush toward me and, no kidding, a young rabbit ran right into my left leg just above the ankle. It tumbled, regained its feet, scooted around me and under the multi-flora rosebush border into the wetland. It’s the first time an animal fleeing a dog has ever collided with me like that, and it’s unlikely to soon occur again, if ever.

I expect similar daily scenarios to develop three weeks from now in familiar autumnal coverts dense with goldenrod, ragweed, cattails and alders. Chubby will attack the brush and leap over it just before the flush, when the cock-birds will cackle, the hens whistle into flight, Chubby hot on their tail. I’ll set my feet in the right direction, mount, point, swing and squeeze the trigger before enthusiastically ordering him to “fetch it up,” then “give.” On the other hand, Lily, showing her age but still plenty capable, will soon start her decline to the role of tagalong, which, frankly, seems impossible. The life of a dog is too short. No, I don’t see it happening this year, when I think for the most part I’ll probably hunt Lily and Chubby separately to make it easier on all us all.

Fact is it’s no accident that with Lily going downhill, Chubby is sprinting toward his best days, slimy mud flying willy-nilly. He’s been waiting in the wings.

posted in Columns, The Dogs | Comments (4)

Sep
19
2012

Godstones

by Gary Sanderson

What a difference a day makes.

When I first sat down for this weekly chore Tuesday afternoon, my intentions were good but the mood was wrong, a gray and somber day, windows closed to seal out moisture, downpours splashing loudly off my hidden flagstone terrace. I found it difficult getting started, my mood dark and brooding, not right for writing; well, unless I intended to take someone to task, which I did not. So, I didn’t fight it. Knew better. Saved what I had, stood up, headed for the kitchen to prepare supper.

Wednesday morning greeted me with a different disposition. I again rose early, dressed warm, wool socks and cap, and opened the windows to let the cold, dry, refreshing air push out the dampness while I caught up on the news with Morning Joe, toggling back and forth between it and NESN for Patriots chatter. Forget the Red Sox, fellas, they’re old news. And, now, here I sit after a brisk, refreshing Sunken Meadow romp with the dogs, they too invigorated in cool air driven by a strong north wind, it pushing enticing scents kitty-corner across the field for them to chase. They were as frisky as I’ve seen them in some time, sprinting wide left, maybe 60 yards ahead through small Christmas trees, before taking a sharp right turn, noses high, tails wiggling, and heading for a collision with the dense, thorny, rosebush perimeter, where they’d stop, wheel around and race back at me to start another rambunctious quartering mission. They didn’t stop until every inch of the large field and thin surrounding swamp was covered.

The air was so refreshing that neither Lily nor Chubby ventured into the swollen, muddy Green River at the spot by an apple tree where they have swam all summer while lustily slurping-in cool water. No need for that Wednesday, when the entire puddled meadow took on the character of a graybeard granddaddy, belt loosened, watching the football games in a La-Z-Boy recliner after Thanksgiving dessert, belly full, the old geezer content, ready to doze into temporary slumber and intermittent snores.

Back to soggy Tuesday, it’s not like it had been unproductive; no, not at all. I had risen early to finish an intriguing book I found squirreled away at Montague Bookmill a few weeks back, one I knew I had seen footnoted in other books read about pre-contact history of New England Native Americans, including the Pocumtuck, Norwottuck and Squakheag tribes of our upper valley. The thick paperback titled “Manitou: The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilization,” is a 1989 James W. Mavor, Jr.,-Byron E. Dix collaboration that dovetails snugly into my daily Green River rambles. Along that river named Picomegan by Natives, I often wander upstream to a large red boulder poking prominently from the stream’s opposite bank, and have confessed right here in print to feeling indigenous spirits. Now I know what it is that I feel there and at other other sites harboring large rocks buried under forest canopies on high ridges and in mucky marshes alike, ancient altars where I have since a boy rambled. What I feel is Manitou, still lurking on the forgotten ritualized landscape.

Other than that river rock, relatively new in my world, the two salient sites that immediately came to mind when reading the Mavor-Dix book were a North Sugarloaf shelf cave I visited hundreds of times as a boy, and a massive balanced rock high atop a prominent Williamsburg ridge on our western horizon. In the days before the Pynchons built Springfield and put native tribes to work in the fur trade, the wide, flat mountaintop was likely burned clear annually so that it’s sacred rock could be seen from eastern hills like the Sugarloafs and Toby. Who knows? It may have even been a solstice sunset marker of some type. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. There’s more research needed. To be honest, I can’t wait to study topo maps, poke around on field trips, always welcome this time of the year when assessing deer-hunting prospects, mast production and whatever. Is there a better time of year than autumn to hike?

I know well the two stone objects I intend to visit but now want to explore the surrounding terrain, looking for unusual ditches or earthen mounds, stonewalls, standing stones or short rows of large stones, all part of ritual landscapes the Manitou book describes and pictures; also stone embrasures and markers near springs or along streams, C-shaped prayer seats, maybe even large, manicured hardwoods that have been miraculously spared by loggers, unlikely indeed.

I would recommend this Manitou book to anyone who spends time in the woods, including that vanishing breed called hunters, observant nimrods who know of large perched or stacked boulders, balanced rocks or impressive stonewalls they’ve asked themselves many times why anyone would ever spend time to build in such unlikely, remote spots, high and thin on topsoil. I am familiar with such stone walls, even one location where two parallel works of art not 50 feet apart run up the south spine of the forest’s highest ridge. I would have never guessed that pair of walls could have been there before the white man appeared, a possibility that opens exciting new territory for exploration — all because of this book discovered on a quick trip through the local used bookshop. That’s why I regularly search through the same bookshelves and make it a point to learn where new books are placed by staff. It’s another form of hunting to me. I hunt down the book, hunt the book for information and will now use the information gleaned to hunt for ritual landscapes that have for five centuries gone unrecognized. It’ll be a great excuse to get some exercise, run the dogs, search for clues and get a fix on what to expect come deer season.

I like to think my antennae for ancient Manitou is in my blood. That old Sanderson farm at the foot of Mt. Sugarloaf stood on Native croplands where Edward Hitchcock and many “grave robbers” after him, including my own ancestors, mined freshly tilled soil for Indian artifacts after pushing their makers to a last refuge on Indian Hill to the west, known today as Whately Glen, before that Sanderson’s Glen. From the Glen to the balanced rock of Williamsburg lore is not far. And, yes, there are many large Glen boulders and stonewalls I’d like to investigate, too, all likely connected on the ritual landscape.

Yeah, I know, the local preachers will call me crazy, say I’m off my rocker, may even try to silence me with letters to the editor. But, remember, early New England clergymen like the Mathers intentionally erased the legend of stones with spiritual significance because they considered such “godstones” as pagan objects for devil worship. Christian preachers are protectors of their doctrine, not truth seekers; and, yes, that includes Deacon Thomas Sanderson of the early Whately church.

Yet, still, in defense of those in my family who displaced Native tribesmen, I am proud to admit it was spinster great-aunt Gladys who shared with me the oral tradition of Indian legend passed down by the keepers of that old Sanderson farm that burned to the ground in July 1882. Some of that east Whately acreage, first the Canterbury section of Hatfield, is still owned by distant Sanderson kin. I suppose if the Indians were here today, they’d call that branch of my family “those with many greenhouses.”

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Local history | Comments (2)

Sep
12
2012

Cats and Rats

by Gary Sanderson

The days are shorter, the air is cooler, and falling acorns are rattling through sturdy oak limbs as distant peaks display faint harbingers of a brilliant fall finale. Soon there’ll be frost on windshields, smoke exiting chimneys, and beagles baying through upland matshes. Yes, the best time of year is near, and here I sit, spinning my wheels in deep, slimy cougar dung. Just can’t seem to shake those big, mysterious cats. But why complain? The ride is wild and satisfying indeed, just how I like it.

Other than that, just a quick trip back to the Deerfield River, where a local critic stirred the sediment last week by criticizing recreational floaters and boaters he has serious issues with. But first the cougars, four-legged, of course.

How can it come as any surprise that three more readers chimed in since last week? Well, actually four if you count the pocket-sized daily planner with a cougar on the cover that was mailed to work by “a reader” who wanted to help me track sightings. As for the emails, well, the first one opined that the critters are here and never left, then revealed that he himself had seen one cross the road in front of him in Chester 15 years ago, and that many neighbors have since seen them and remained silent.

The second email was sent by an old Recorder colleague, he reporting a string of recent sightings in Barre, where the country store, gas station, tavern and downtown soda jerk facing that classic common must be abuzz with chatter. Then, lastly, an interesting tip from Swampfield about Monson rumors, supposedly including a game warden who saw a big cat with his own eyes but ain’t talkin’. No problem. It just so happens that I have, by marriage, eyes and ears in Monson — good ones, at that, deep-rooted with delicate tendrils to many inside channels. That said, I regret to admit that my probe bore no fruit, not so much as a blossom. So, as old “Antie” used to say, better to leave it be. Although I can’t say I called the police or town hall, not even a local gun shop to inquire whether a salesman had heard anything, it wasn’t necessary. Others dug for me, likely employing a folksy style that came up dry as attic dust. That’s good enough for me. Had rumor been rampant, it would have ricocheted right back at me like a bullet. Oh well. Gave it my best shot. Who knows? Maybe something will spring up yet. We’ll see.

But enough on cougars, onto Deerfield River feedback, more specifically, reaction to my lead item last week about an unnamed source’s description of disrespectful behavior by obnoxious, holiday-weekend, Deerfield River thrill-seekers leaving trash in their floating-and-boating wake. We’ll start with a complaint from a man whose name I recalled from last fall, at which time he reported what he viewed as illegal post-Irene flood reconstruction of the Chickley River along Route 8A in Hawley. I passed that tip along to the newsroom before leaving for vacation and, sure enough, the guy was right on target, as evidenced by the expensive penalties slapped recently on the town. Well, this time the fella from Shelburne Falls left a phone message venting his anger at me for labeling recreational Deerfield River users from Northampton and Easthampton as “outsiders.” That, he found ridiculous. I wanted to call him on the phone and explain but couldn’t find his number. What I wanted to say was that I don’t consider people from Hampshire and Hampden counties to be outsiders. My source did, and I attributed the comment. But in that harmless fella’s defense, some folks inhabit smaller worlds than others, limiting their tiny domains to a place where they were born and raised. In such townie logic, people who use the river are considered outsiders if they haven’t attended local schools, shot pool in downtown bars or often pass them in their daily travels. It’s pretty cut and dried, especially around sacred fishing holes like the one called “Johnson’s.” To be honest, I confess to at times being guilty of such provincialism myself; yes, more than capable of calling a new bird hunter from Chicopee or West Side an outsider for invading a favorite pheasant covert. Sorry, Man. I’m rooted.

Another comment concerning problems along our Deerfield River came by email and began by thanking me for “bringing to light a sad situation.” Then, off he went to unleash a no-holds-barred tirade from someone who works as a Deerfield fishing guide and serves as an officer for a respected conservation agency. He says he’s stopped booking weekend fishing gigs because of obnoxious weekend activity by yahoo flotillas. I’ve chosen not to give his name but, trust me, he’s credible. The critic spared no one, accusing commercial whitewater companies of “whoring out the river,” law-enforcement officials of ignoring the inaccessible stretch between Bardwells Ferry and Stillwater, tubers and drinkers of trashing habitat, and dam-controlled, extreme flow changes of “wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.”

The turbulent river flows he speaks of were mandated 20 years ago, following contentious debate between commercial whitewater enthusiasts and Trout Unlimited during the last Federal Energy Regulatory Commission dam re-licensing process. To quickly summarize the outcome of that hot debate, the whitewater people won, TU and the river lost, and the Chamber of Commerce celebrated in the end zone.

“There should never be more than a 500-cubic-feet-per-second differential between low and high water, and the paltry minimum flows have dramatically reduced biomass in the river,” complained the source, adding that, “The little trickle you see at low water (which is the way the river typically flows 21 hours a day) is bad for the total habitat and the majority of benthic macro invertebrates, which need constant water to survive. Hence the Deerfield is really like a small stream rather than a healthy river in terms of biomass. Is it any surprise that the river hatches are pathetic?”

A forester who participated in the dam-relicensing process happened to catch the comments and jumped right into the fray, writing: “The real issue here is that, although there may be a conflict between two recreational users of the Deerfield River, no human use should impair a reasonably functioning ecosystem.”

He went on to say he was surprised TU didn’t negotiate for more flows ideal for fishing, then diplomatically concluded by admitting, “There is, no doubt, still room for a great deal of improvement.”

To say fishermen agree would be a colossal understatement. Stay tuned. This flood seems to have stirred the darkest sediment from the river’s bed, liberating volatile issues into the mainstream for all to see. Obviously, some people with vested interests would prefer to leave the controversial topics buried three layers beneath the deepest pools, clinging like slime to the bedrock.

Too late now.

posted in Columns, Cougars, Indians | Comments (1)

Sep
05
2012

River Rage

by Gary Sanderson

Late start, full plate, probably way more than I can handle in one sitting. No problem. I’ll just save the leftovers and nuke ’em next week. Maybe I should start writing two columns a week.

Anyway, the signs of fall that started creeping onto the edges weeks ago are now everywhere. Soon the leaf-peepers will be clogging the highways and bringing fall revenue to our local economy. But similar to the Republicans in Tampa, the irate fella who phoned me noontime Sunday during a beautiful Labor Day Weekend back-lit at night by a seductive blue moon wanted to look back, not ahead. He was still steamed up by irritating summer signals lingering along the lower Deerfield River, where he, his wife and dog camped Thursday for an intended long weekend away from it all. At least, that’s what they hoped for; definitely not what they got.

It seems that the once-tranquil stretch of river between Bardwells Ferry and Stillwater ain’t what it used to be, a disheartening fact that many of us discovered long ago. I know the lower Deerfield well from years of hunting and fishing, and that picturesque gorge is stained throughout with my DNA dating back centuries, starting with the surname worn by the bridge and ferry. The last time I went there, many years ago, to a familiar spot saturated with pleasant fishing memories, I left prematurely and vowed in hot, spicy language never to return; way too much “activity” for me — as it turns out, the same type of annoying activity that necessitated the early exit by the man who called my home Sunday. The name on the caller ID was a blast from the distant past.

“I had to get out of there,” fumed the South Deerfield man and Whately native on the phone with hunter-orange anger. “Those people floating down the river are hard to take. I didn’t know who to call, then thought of you. After 3 o’clock Saturday afternoon, more than a hundred tubers came by riding anything that floats — inner tubes, cheap blow-up prizes from the fair, you name it. I even saw six or seven people having a gay ole time drinking, littering, throwing bottles into the river, off a blow-up queen mattress. No lie. I decided to pack up and leave before I punched someone and got myself into trouble. We were outnumbered. I just wanted to get my Lab out of there before he cut his foot. That riverbed is a freakin’ mess.”

Irritated, the man folded his tent, loaded it into his canoe and headed downstream for his car, which was parked in the riverside lot south and west of Stillwater Bridge. Before turning the final corner to where he could clearly see the entire Stillwater Bridge, he found a disturbing pile of trash that stoked his ire to a red-hot glow.

“There were inner tubes, deflated floating devices, bottles and cans and trash everywhere. It looked like an ugly, stinking dump. Take a ride down there if you don’t believe me and see it for yourself. I’m sure it’s still there. Who should I call to report it? It’s freakin’ disgusting.”

Our source spoke to many of the frolicking folks passing by in the water and described them as outsiders, “not from town,” many from the Springfield and Northampton area, others from Worcester and Rhode Island. The most common question he was asked was, “How far to Stillwater?” That’s where they said their buses were waiting. Apparently, the flotilla gang didn’t feel up to lugging their garbage up the bank to the buses, easier to leave it streamside for someone else to clean up. Pigs!

Honestly, I can’t imagine such unacceptable behavior by customers of trips supervised by our local whitewater companies, although the source — who I decided not to name — claims to often see the local companies’ vehicles parked at Stillwater. It seems more likely that the folks involved in the floating circus he encountered Friday and Saturday were holiday excursions organized far away. Still, the whitewater companies cannot claim zero culpability because there’s no denying they put our Deerfield River “on the map.”

The problem as I see it from this lofty perch along the trestle overlooking the Deerfield’s wild west bank is that the slobs who create the problems will be long gone by the time law-enforcement arrives determined to make a vindictive statement. The “violators” ultimately charged, convicted and made examples of will likely be victims of circumstance and undeserving of what they get. Local lollygaggers will probably be punished for the dirty deeds of outsiders.

“It’s out of control,” said my source. “I usually mind my own business but I want to report these people. Hopefully we can send them back where they came from.”

Good luck!

The days of the Deerfield River as a hidden local gem are long gone. I suppose some think that’s a good thing. Not me. I miss the “old” Deerfield River, especially the inaccessible secluded sections, places Trout Unlimited fought and failed to protect. As usual, money talked, entrepreneurs won and the ecosystem is paying the price.

posted in Columns | Comments (3)

Aug
29
2012

Photo Evidence?

by Gary Sanderson

Yep, another cougar tale. What can I say? They just keep coming at me.

This latest report immediately piqued my interest for a few reasons: first, the southwestern New Hampshire location; second, an interesting photo; and third, I knew the man who wrote the front-page New Hampshire Sunday News story.

I was first alerted to the Aug. 19 lead story by an Ashfield friend who on Sunday emailed an Internet link to the online version accompanied by the vivid color photo shown below. Then, Tuesday afternoon on my Recorder desk, a reminder, this time the hardcopy Sunday News clipping sent from a Greenfield reader whose sister lives in Hooksett, N.H. The Greenfield sister learned of the story on the phone, requested it in the mail and relayed it to me.

To be honest, I was immediately leery of the photo, said to be shot in May in Alstead, N.H., by an upright 79-year-old citizen and outdoorsman who happened to have his camera along for a woodland search for shed antlers. The problem is that I’ve seen many similar photos that proved to be bogus. My suspicion didn’t fade after reading the article; it was vague, not enough detail about the witness, who was evasive, a red flag to me when evaluating a cougar tale. However, I respected the veteran reporter, longtime North Country outdoor scribe John Harrigan, a character I had met many years ago in his Coos County Democrat office in Lancaster, N.H., trusted his judgment and wanted to talk to him.

I had met Harrigan on a midday whim around 1990, when I happened to be passing through his paper’s upper Connecticut Valley town on vacation and stopped in to meet him, then the Democrat’s owner/publisher/editor, now “semi-retired” as a columnist in his 44th year as a newspaperman. I had spoken to him the previous fall, when he provided the details for an interesting story I was chasing about a Lancaster, N.H., Agway store owner who had been telling suspicious customers and coffee-shop chums about a wild boar he had seen from his tree stand during the archery deer season. Yes, it seems the fellas in town were having quite a time of it, ribbing ole Sonny Martin nonstop about his phantom Northwoods boar sighting, even going so far as to suggest his visions may have been LSD flashbacks, that perhaps he ought to have his head examined. Well, Martin fought back, putting an abrupt end to the incessant, insulting gossip when the animal made the fatal mistake of crossing his path during the rifle deer season. Martin promptly drew a bead and shot the critter dead before parading through town with it strapped to his vehicle, silencing the giggles and whispers once and for all.

This week I learned that Harrigan — the very man with whom I had laughed out loud in his upstairs Democrat office about the colorful boar story — has, like me, been a committed reporter of cougar sightings. “If it doesn’t happen in New Hampshire,” he quipped, “I don’t care about it.” Yet, a deeper probe does not bear him out. Fact is he did, like me, report last year’s Connecticut road-killed cougar and has, like me, referred many times to the laboratory-confirmed Quabbin-cougar scat samples collected in 1996 by an animal-tracking expert. So, I guess Harrigan sometimes does meander beyond his normal boundaries for stories about cougars, those elusive, long-tailed ghosts of the New England forest, and so do I.

Harrigan’s Sunday News piece created quite a stir throughout New England, went cybersapce viral, prompting him to return to his source for a follow-up. It was then that he discovered a troubling discrepancy: the photo had in fact taken at least five years ago, not this past May. Harrigan wrote the follow-up column to correct the error but is still confident his story will stand. The photo was taken by a respected professional man whose word many respected sources consider impeccable. One of the folks who swore to his credibility was none other than Ted Walski, the respected New Hampshire turkey biologist this space has worked with in the past. Harrigan believes the photo was indeed taken some 50 miles north of here, and he also believes that the man who shot it could, if pressed, find the negative to prove his claim.

A Recorder photographer who looked at the photo enlarged on a hi-def computer screen Wednesday afternoon said he could see no evidence of PhotoShop “doctoring.” True, the landscape looks like New England, but it could easily be Michigan or Illinois as well. Perhaps someone will recognize the photo as a hoax. If so, please let me know. I went through old email files and checked for Snopes.com, which has proven helpful with past photos I’ve received by email, and found nothing.

posted in Columns, Cougars | Comments (2)

Aug
22
2012

Seafood Platter

by Gary Sanderson

One of those days, I guess.

Maybe it was the clear, cool air that greeted me at 6 a.m., perhaps the strong, black coffee, possibly even lingering effects from that red-hot, spicy marinara sauce I concocted in a flash Tuesday afternoon, then devoured in the evening over a thick bed of linguine. Whatever the impetus, it was powerful, strapping me into a single-seat gyroscope that got spinning out of control, like a top on polished linoleum. So captivating was it that I extended my daily morning walk, taking a refreshing diversion through the knee-deep Green River before returning to my truck and walking right past it to follow the hayfield cuff to a path descending into a second hidden riverside meadow. There a mowed meandering lane looped me to a large red river rock that I believe harbors Native spirits, happy ones I hope to someday meet.

Truth be told, I’m switching on the fly. I had a column all written before I sat down, but I’m all fired-up by the election chatter that’s abuzz with — go figure — idiotic right-wing lunacy. Anyway, that first column can wait; it’s about the joys of watching Chubby, my young Springer Spaniel, develop before my eyes with pheasant season looming. He’ll be fun. I can’t wait to bust him loose. But I put that story in the freezer, will thaw it out for another day. This time of year is always lean on local sports and, to be honest, I feel guilty when filling pages with wire news that readers have typically seen on TV the previous day. It’s a good excuse, I suppose, to ramble a bit, always dangerous with my wife on the Cape, me “batching” it, not sure what to do with my freedom. Yeah, right! A colleague I call “The Big Boiczek” got a kick out of that playful complaint, reacting like he does whenever I whine about being a victim of small-town gossip. He gets a kick out of that claim, too.

Enough of that, though; onto other stuff, beginning with a quick follow-up on last week’s story about a mother/daughter cougar sighting in East Charlemont, one I hesitated from the start to publish. Why? Because I always shy away from nighttime sightings, potentially risky and unreliable. But those sinister green eyes and that guttural sound from dark woods, eerie indeed, tickled my fancy and I guess more than anything else I am a storyteller, albeit one sporting a thin white scoundrel’s streak down my back. It was a great tale that had to be told. And in my own defense, I did, if you care to check, cast subtle doubt early, a disclaimer, so to speak. Good thing.

After that wild tale hit the street, a few concerned West County sources fired off emails warning me that I may have been snookered. “I wouldn’t say they made up the whole story,” wrote a critic familiar with the witnesses. “I believe they saw eyes, maybe raccoons, and their imaginations ran away to fantasy land.” The source, a gentleman who worked around Western cougars, called it unlikely that any cougar would permit a human to walk within “five or six feet” without fleeing. He also said cougars prey on live animals, not road-kill and garbage, thus wouldn’t be attracted to seafood like the pungent mussel shells the witness described on the ground near a torn plastic rubbish bag. I had honestly tossed that factor around in my head before going forward with the tale but decided to go with it, considering troublesome cougars I had recently read about in LA and Chicago. Maybe urban cats can be temporarily reduced to scavenging, I thought. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Whew! With that in the rearview, let’s tippie-toe into a couple of other subjects that had my wheels spinning to a shrill scream during that extended walk through the sunken riverside meadows. I’ll try to be brief, can’t resist, am “Akin” to chime in on a couple of controversies, one from my boyhood home, the other from the national campaign trail that’s heating up for the stretch run to November 6. I’ll start in South Deerfield and jump briefly to Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri), who’s taken Romney/Ryan to a forbidden place called the uterus. No, forget “Sowdeerfeel” for a moment. I’m going to stay with Akin and his flat-earth Republicans. The more these Christian-conservative whack jobs talk, the more I like it: indecent exposure for sure, opinions that ought to send any woman in her right mind straight to the polls to vote for any candidate followed by a capital D on the ballot. Oh my! Where do these Neanderthal creeps come from? Is there any way to herd them all onto an ark headed for Timbuktu? Now they’re giving the uterus a brain and conscience to guard against rape pregnancy. Lord have mercy. These folks spew hate and fear of big government in one frothing breath, then ask the very same demon to define “legitimate” rapes and stand sentry to enforce the Christian way in bedrooms. What’s most frightening is that 40-something percent of the voting public will actually vote for these cavemen. Actually, the Cro-Magnons knew better. When they ambushed a female and took her like a buck intercepts a doe, they did so to propagate, not violate. We’ve come a long way since then, with the evolution of courting, engagement, marriage and nuclear families, but there’s little an unprotected, ovulating female can do to prevent rape fertilization, regardless of male intent or day-after prayers. It just don’t work that way.

Before I split, back to my old hometown, where it’s getting pretty wild concerning what appears to be the inevitable hiring of a native-son police chief town officials seem determined to install before thoroughly vetting baggage from Erving, where the man was chief of police for several years. Rumors are swirling, people are buzzing in the coffee shops and taverns, and now a supposed “group” of concerned citizens has appeared at the 11th hour to write an accusatory letter to the town fathers, The Recorder and The Daily Hampshire Gazette in an effort to stall, if not derail, the imminent hiring. Stay tuned. From what I’m hearing, this one is far from over. Problem is that people in Erving and elsewhere are hesitant to talk due to fear of reprisal. Count me among them. I don’t need the hassle. All I can say from my lofty perch in a tall white oak along Sugarloaf’s spine is: Where there’s smoke there’s fire. I see the smoke rising from a place I know well, have taken a deep whiff and it smells fishy — definitely not stinky roadside mussel shells, either.

Enough! I’m outta here. I can clearly read the signs tacked to trees. They say “No Trespassing!”

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Aug
15
2012

Close Encounter

by Gary Sanderson

It’s really starting to get wild here in cougar country.

First, sightings, then related follow-ups and safety concerns; now shiny green eyes and a guttural grumble that’s difficult to describe, even from close quarters … real close, like, say, five or six feet, if you can believe it.

Yes, folks, it looks like these cougar sightings we’ve been following in recent years have climbed to a new altitude. I can already sense what’s next. A U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service field researcher will soon be sent to investigate cougar sightings as I pore through brittle, yellowed town records attempting to reincarnate the likes of Greenfield’s James Corse and Ashfield’s Phillip Phillips, two historic hunters whose names are prominent among 18th-century “panther” bounty hunters. It could be fun for a fella like me.

Having already seen a wayward Western cougar killed on a Connecticut highway, how long before one turns up dead on a roadway close to home; like, say, right here in Franklin or Hampshire County, maybe Berkshire or southern Vermont’s Windham counties? Likely not long, in my humble opinion. When a roadside carcass finally does appear, it’ll be entertaining to watch the professional deniers flee for cover, furiously trying to adjust their initial logic and spin their old opinion that sightings were creative figments of fertile human imagination. Yeah, right! If you believe that, you probably believe the Romney-Ryan ticket really wants to save Medicare.

To be honest, I’m getting sick of writing about cougars — at least the four-legged variety — and fret that readers, too, have had enough. Hey — who knows? — they may even think I’m going goofy as I approach the big 6-0. I sure as hell don’t want people comparing me to those eccentric, bespectacled old ladies I remember as a kid pedaling their bicycles around town through a thick air of giggles and whispers. No, frankly, I’d much prefer to chime in on the election, the VP choice, the illness along America’s Gulf Coast in wake of the BP Disaster; you know, the deepwater geyser our mainstream media would lead us to believe was over-hyped and left no long-term damage. But, no, I must return to cougars, local sightings from credible witnesses. I just can’t get away from them, with recent reports swarming like black flies in Victory Bog. So, here we go again.

First, an email from a local police chief I knew from my adult South Deerfield days; “Sowdeerfeel” to those of us with roots, rarer and rarer these days. Anyway, after reading about a backyard cougar sighting by Greenfield’s Lorraine Blanchard on Adams Road, the chief dropped me a quick note saying: “Read your article on cougar sightings today and wanted to pass on that last week retired probation officer Dick Colgan told me he had seen a cougar cross the bridge on Bascom Road from Gill into Greenfield. It wouldn’t be a far stretch for that same cougar to continue its path southwest to Adams Road.” Indeed. Not far a’tall, Chief; probably less than a mile.

Colgan, a Gill resident and former Eagle Scout, wasn’t alone. No, he was returning home from an evening trip to a Bernardston creemee with his wife and granddaughter, both of whom also saw the beast; it was standing on the Gill side, panicked with the car approaching and ran across the bridge right at them before disappearing into thick streamside brush, fleeing downstream toward Scout Road and its intersection with Adams Road. The date was July 1. Blanchard’s sighting occurred a month later, on Aug. 5.

But hold on. This one gets better. Before I had even spoken to Colgan, I was on my way into The Recorder for my weekly Monday meeting and, at the reception desk, passed another old acquaintance, Charlie Olchowski of Trout Unlimited and beer-brewing fame. He stopped me to voice his concerns about potential cougar dangers in the local woods, wondering aloud if he was at risk hiking or biking through the wilds of Colrain with family, seemingly suggesting that maybe I ought to address the topic. Sorry, but I ain’t going there. I’d hate to stir up bloodlust for an elusive creature no one is likely to encounter. The fact is that even if you did cross paths with a cougar in the woods, it’s unlikely that an attack would occur. It’s far more likely that such a cat would try its best to avoid human contact. That said, I must admit that I feel more comfortable carrying a .38 revolver when patrolling the woods alone. Although I have never removed the weapon from my hip for protection, I do feel more secure packing it for solo walks through the woods with or without the dogs.

Anyway, with Olchowski in the rear-view, I broke the newsroom threshold and hadn’t even sat down before veteran scribe Diane Broncaccio approached with obvious excitement in her voice. She had taken a call earlier that day from a Shelburne Falls woman with an interesting cougar yarn. It seems that the previous night, about 10 o’clock, Torie O’Dell was driving 19-year-old daughter Nicole home to Colrain on North River Road in East Charlemont, before the dump, when her headlights illuminated a big pair of unusual green eyes on the side of the road. Curious, the two women stopped and turned around to identify the source. Animal lovers, they feared something was injured. When they pulled into the turnaround where they had seen the eyes, sure enough, they still shone brightly low to the ground just inside the woods. Thinking perhaps someone’s pet was injured and in distress, Nicole told her mother not to shine the lights directly at the creature before going outside to investigate, uttering a soothing, “Here, kitty, kitty,” along the way. When she got to within what she estimated to be five or six feet, the animal swung slightly around to face her directly, still crouched, and she knew her little walk had been a bad idea.

“It was a huge cat with a big head and green eyes about five or six inches apart,” she said on the phone Tuesday night. “I wasn’t sure what it was at first because it was low to the ground, back arched, like a cat laying on its stomach but not laying down, crouched down, like it was ready to pounce.”

The cat’s tail was curled forward toward its head and had a distinctive black tip. When Nicole noticed the tail “flicking” right below the face, she slowly backed up, creating a little distance, and ran a few steps to the car, according to her mom.

“Its head was ginormous,” Nicole said. “It didn’t seem aggressive, but when it moved I was very close and scared.”

After turning toward Nicole, the cat uttered a continuous eerie sound O’Dell was totally unfamiliar with. She described it as a “low grumble.” When asked if she could give a better description, like maybe a purr or soft growl, she said, “No, neither of those, more like a deep hissing sound, nothing I have ever heard before.”

Torie, watching from the car, claims she immediately recognized the terror in her daughter’s hurried steps and reaction. Then, when she got inside the car, “she was terrified, shaking and trembling.”

The next day, Torie went back to the scene along the lower eastern slope of Catamount State Forest and found a rubbish bag torn open, the contents, including pungent mussel shells, scattered about. The cat had been crouching to eat. She didn’t want to disturb the site because she thought maybe someone would want to investigate for evidence, which never happened.

Still stunned a couple of days later on the phone, Nicole called her close encounter “astonishing.”

“I had no clue such animals existed here,” she said. “The flicking tail under that huge face and eyes was scary, and the distance between its eyes was ridiculous.”

The next time she sees such a sight along the road, she’ll probably choose to stay in the car and search with her headlights. No more walking toward dark woods with a friendly, “Here, kitty, kitty.”

Looking back on the incident, Torie O’Dell is just grateful the beast wasn’t ornery.

“Nicole only weighs 90 pounds,” she said. “I think that cat could have made quick work of her.”

posted in Columns, Cougars | No Comments

Aug
08
2012

Another Cougar

by Gary Sanderson

Uh-oh, here we go again. Buckle your chinstraps. Fasten your seat belts. Looks like another flurry of cougar sightings — four legs, distinctive long tail — the latest one close to home.

But, first, a little background. This most recent surge began quite inauspiciously more than a month ago, when an envelope on my Recorder desk postmarked White River Junction, Vt., brought an anonymous note accompanied by a Lancaster, N.H., newspaper clipping about a cougar sighting. I publicized this sighting by a trained naturalist in a rare second column that ran “inside” on July 5, and figured I’d leave it at that. But the story didn’t end there. No sir. In fact, that’s where it all started. Go figure.

Last week, more cougars, beginning with a phone call at work from a neighbor whose brother had on the late-afternoon of July 30 seen one cross the road in front of his vehicle on Route 112 in Ashfield. He promised to provide a detailed email account and did so the next day, when his message fell into my spam filter and languished overnight. By the time I read his story the next morning, I had already explored an email link to a Michigan television news segment about a 17th confirmed cougar sighting in that state, this one captured on a hunter’s trail camera. I worked both sightings into last week’s column without devoting a lot of space, and now, you guessed it, two more this week — one from long ago, reported by reader Ned James, who saw it near his Ashfield home, the other Sunday by a woman living on Adams Road in Greenfield. The Greenfield witness is not a Recorder subscriber, hadn’t the faintest idea that I had ever written anything about local cougar sightings, was unaware of the road-killed big cat last year on a southern Connecticut highway, and hesitated even to share with her neighbors what she had seen for fear that they’d think she was nuts.

“To be honest, I was starting to question myself, thinking maybe my mind was playing games with me and I ought to visit a shrink,” said 67-year-old registered nurse Lorraine (Hagerty) Blanchard. “When I finally got the nerve to tell my neighbors, I said, ‘It couldn’t have been a bobcat. They’re not that big and they don’t have long tails.’”

The neighbor’s wife suggested she call The Recorder, said there was a reporter there who’d written of many cougar sightings. So Blanchard called the newsroom Tuesday morning, the administrative assistant took the information and her phone number, emailed them to me and I dialed the woman’s number before noon. Ms. Blanchard screened the call on her answering machine and picked up when I identified myself in a message. We proceeded to chat for about an hour. She said absolutely nothing to draw suspicion or dissuade me from going public with her sighting. So, here it is.

It was Sunday afternoon, about 4:30, and Ms. Blanchard had just returned home. Hot and muggy, she put on her bathing suit and stepped out onto the deck overlooking the pool and her backyard, bordered by woods 100 to 200 feet away. There, along the wood line, sat the cat, sitting straight up like a dog. She got a good side profile of the beast from the rear, said it towered over a three-foot-high birdhouse standing on a post within five feet. The animal appeared to be all brown, its long tail wrapped around to the front. Soon her pet cat, Jingles, came running nervously toward her. Then an unfamiliar gray cat scooted off, also visibly nervous. Blanchard doesn’t think the wildcat knew it was under observation but it soon stood up and slowly ambled into the woods, “not running, just walking like a cat. It was huge, the shoulders powerful, a beautiful animal, sleek, graceful, gorgeous. I want to go to the library, find a book and learn more about these animals. I didn’t know we had anything like that around here. I thought they were out west. I’d only seem them on National Geographic TV. What a beautiful animal.”

Blanchard was able to gauge the animal’s size because it was sitting between the birdhouse and her backyard shed. “I’d guess it was four or five feet tall, sitting up, from its butt to the top of its ears,” she said. “When it got into the woods, it turned its head back and yawned. Then I saw it moving through the trees and it disappeared. That’s when I went to my neighbors’ house. I described what I had seen and they said it sounded like a cougar. I looked it up in the dictionary and knew that’s what I had seen.”

When informed that state and federal wildlife experts have in the past accused those who’ve reported such sightings of mistaking large domestic cats for cougars because of deceiving light conditions, she laughed and without hesitation said, “Why would they say such a thingt? My cat weighs 18 pounds; it would look like an ant compared to what I saw.”

Blanchard’s description of the sitting cougar was strikingly similar to a tale told me in the gym by Ernie Snow of Bernardston Road in Greenfield. As I recall, Snow spotted his big cat sitting under his backyard apple tree. He said he watched it out the window for some time before it rose to all fours and walked off, much the way Blanchard described it, all power and grace, a beautiful sight to behold. When I told Snow I had reported a cougar sighting at neighboring Emerson Farm, he knew, said he had read it in the paper and almost called, but didn’t; which underscores the possibility of many similar local sightings that go unreported.

How can anyone question sightings like Blanchard’s or Snow’s? I believe the day is approaching when there will be no denials, just warnings to give the beasts space and let them pass. But first wildlife officials must stop dismissing cougar sightings as LSD flashbacks and misidentified kitty cats, and admit they’re on the comeback trail to the reforested Northeast.

Which reminds me: Do you suppose all the wildfires ravaging the Wild West could be speeding cougars’ eastward migration? They have to flee somewhere. Why not the wild Great Lakes country and on to the dense, craggy Adirondack, Green and White mountain ranges? They’ve been there before, appear to be coming back.

posted in Columns, Cougars | No Comments

Aug
01
2012

Full-Moon Ramble

by Gary Sanderson

Blame that waxing Sturgeon Moon; it cleared the air, brightened the stars and sharpened my perspective, a cool, gentle midnight breeze through the bedside window whisking away the dust and cobwebs, a tiny drop of  grease setting the cranial wheels free for silent pillow probes. Sleep? Hell no. Not on moonlit nights.

So here I sit, the next day, reflecting a few weeks back to a salient scene, the image vivid. It’s morning, the sun low. Grandson Jordi and I are walking up the short hill to a familiar galvanized gate. It’s been a good walk, great conversation, a refreshing swim, to boot. We’re jabbering about this and that, nearing the not-yet-visible truck. Our journey has taken us two-thirds around the perimeter of Sunken Meadow to a short, splashy frolic with two rambunctious gun dogs down the Green River to a chest-deep, corner swimming hole, in fishing jargon, what I call a run. There I had demonstrated the breast stroke and frog kick, sidestroke and scissors kick, Jordi, self-conscious, trying to please, his progress my reward. I’m no teacher but can get by.

What I remember most about that short uphill trek to the hayfield is a discomforting thought that jostled me. How do you tell a bright, innocent young boy who’s experienced the loss of his dad that, because of my generation, my father’s and lingering, infectious greed, it may already be too late for him to escape the horrors of radical climate change, maybe even the stench of death from starvation or disease borne from filthy drinking water? Don’t tell anyone, but it’s already happening in the Third World. Shhhhhhh. Why alarm folks? Out of sight, out of mind … for now.

I let the unpleasant thought pass unspoken; tell him instead how nice it is to have his company on my daily walks, typically solitary. I do enjoy companionship. He provides someone to talk to, a nice change, though I can’t say I object to walking alone. Oftentimes, I explain, I’ll spot something, even a common sight, that stirs my creative juices and squirts them into a steep gorge which flows to a column. He looks at me, bemused, struggling to grasp a difficult concept for anyone just getting a faint whiff of literacy’s flowered periphery. He understands better when I explain how witnessing natural phenomena can stimulate thoughts or emotions about something from the past, maybe even the present or future, potentially unleash a roaring torrent that riles from mucky sediment poignant riffs later captured in print. Some carry a notepad to capture profound thoughts and catchy phrases. Not me. I’m usually capable of recreating the spark that burst into flames. Often the rekindled thoughts spiral even deeper into an ominous, swirling abyss of introspection I never fear.

Jordi just looks up with those sparkling, pensive amber eyes and says, “Oh,” which suggests to me that he gets my drift — well, as much as any 6-year-old could, I guess. I’m confident he’ll better understand my idiosyncrasies as the years pass. I will continue leading him to offbeat exploration till the day I depart this place for another, better or worse, wherever and whenever it may be, leaving him to cut his own path, hopefully trimming low-hanging obstructions with my old machete.

Driving out to the road, the landowner is working in his garden. I stop and slide down the window to chat. Jordi can’t resist interrupting: “Did you tell him about that crow, Grampy?” The query raps the man’s funny bone dead center. My column that day had mentioned the defiant crow perched alone atop a tomato stake, not the least bit afraid of the threatening, owl-eyed, scarecrow beach balls dangling from strings, standing sentry. I had written that Jordi was amused by that lonely crow’s open defiance, and the man had obviously read it. That’s why he laughed out loud and said, “Yeah, we saw it, too. My wife said, ‘Isn’t it funny how even some crows seem to have a mind of their own?’” I didn’t share with him my spontaneous thought about how many times I myself had chosen such a perch, sharpshooter taking aim and sending a|bullet whizzing past my left ear, me startled, jumping up, chuckling and flying off to another precarious perch down the road. Ah, yes, the story of my life. Maybe Jordi will make it easier on himself. Maybe not. Either way, I’ll be there for him, a loyal surrogate.

Just the thought of this tugs me by the hand like a sleepy lover toward another summertime ramble, this one leading to a new book by Saratoga, N.Y., environmental gloom-and-doomer James Howard Kunstler, before traipsing off to an old book written by preeminent Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn, then a little cougar talk and, well, whatever else leaps with a mischievous grin onto this wayward, moonlit path. Oh, the perilous swings these full-moon rambles can take with a two-fingered keyboard Cancer hammering away.

First, cougars, that is a late-afternoon Monday sighting on Route 112 in Ashfield, near Bug Hill Road. The witness, a southern New Hampshire Verizon lineman living temporarily with his brother in my Greenfield Meadows neighborhood, got a good look at the long-tailed beast; it crossed the road less than 100 feet in front of him and stopped. He described the sighting as unmistakable, though the cat was a bit on the small side, in the 60-to-80-pound range, half-again as big as his brother’s dog. There have been many sightings over the years in that general vicinity, say between Plainfield and West Whately, wild country indeed, perfect for catamounts. And get this: Wednesday morning in my inbox was a message with an Internet link to a news story about the 17th confirmed Michigan cougar sighting in recent years. I challenge anyone to claim a cougar couldn’t easily make its way here from Michigan through Upstate New York. Puh-leeze!

As for Kunstler’s new book, “Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of a Nation,” it was brought to my attention by a loyal reader who saw last week’s mention of Bill McKibben’s scary “Rolling Stone” piece on global warming. McKibben claims our planet is heating much quicker than the mainstream media and government want us to believe. Well, Kunstler heaps doom and destruction upon McKibben’s dire warning, proclaiming that by the time the turds hit the turbines, advanced technology will not save us. I’m not sure what I believe, have always taken Kunstler with a bittersweet teaspoon of caution but I do not dismiss his theory anymore than I accept the mainstream “objective” garbage. I do fear we’re headed for disaster, though, if not already there with extended drought, three-digit Heartland temperatures and raging Western wildfires. Nothing to lose sleep over, I guess. Ask Mitt Romney, who’s loudly stumping for the drill-baby-drill Keystone Pipeline. American voters may just elect our former governor and his voodoo Bain Capital magic. The election promises to be close, and quite scary. Anyone who believes Romney gives a hoot about you and me is delusional. He couldn’t care less about  working slobs. And, no matter how many times partisan Republicans implore that both parties are controlled by the same corporations and big money, remember this: Kunstler and McKibben both voted for Obama the last time and will do so again, while the Koch brothers and their diabolical cronies funnel major money to the GOP and random “Blue-Dog” Democrats willing to turn their backs as industry poisons the globe.

Which provides a nice segue to Bailyn, whose 1969 classic, “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” is still considered the best analysis of the Colonial political landscape leading up to the Revolution. I have read much by Bailyn and can’t say I find him a pleasurable read, but he does know the socio/political Revolutionary nuances as well as anyone, perhaps better. After many times considering “Ideological Origins” but backing off at the steep online price of non-library hardcovers in acceptable condition, I finally found a pristine paperback at Montague Bookmill, bought it cheap and blew right through it. Having read many scholars’ takes on the genesis of the American Revolution, all of them seem consistent on one unstated point: America is today what England was in 1776. “Radical” British Whigs were being jailed, the stench of government corruption was eye-watering, and elections were blatantly being bought. Whigs crying for change and pointing to the fall of the Roman Empire were shouted down by cozy conservative insiders who called their critics traitors.

Well, fellas, I hate to say it but those Whigs, men like Burke and Wilkes, got the last, told-you-so chortle when American rebels expelled the British oppressors and loyalist lackeys, won independence and started anew. Hey, that reminds me: Has anyone ever figured out exactly what happened to Mayan civilization? Just wondering.

Good night, moon

posted in Columns, Grandkids | Comments (2)

Jul
25
2012

Crossroads

by Gary Sanderson

Curiosity is a stiletto, needle-point, both edges razor sharp, lethal in the wrong hands, yet also a stimulating path to discovery — just one more double-edged sword from which I have never cowered. In fact, I slide it under my belt to tickle my grandsons’ fancy, maybe even that of their children if ever so fortunate. Stifle a child’s curiosity and you ought to be charged with abuse. At least, that’s my view, televangelist, Sunday School teacher and chief of police be damned.

What’s got me thinking this week is the lawn, a rare three weeks without mowing. Having performed the chore for nearly 50 years in this fertile valley, I know it has never before happened in my lifetime. So, of course, my wheels are spinning to a shrill, piercing scream, on my walks, in my rambles, when random thoughts distract even the most gripping reads.

Yeah, I know, I can feel readers’ angst already: “Uh-oh,” they’re pondering, “where’s he going with this?” And I suppose there are a many turns I could take on a subject like curiosity, starting with that threadbare axiom about the cat and the pleasant outcome that brought about its reincarnation. But, no, far too familiar. What’s bugging me as I sit here today, contemplating a drought interrupted by our first puddles in weeks, followed by inspiring Wednesday-morning air, is the reading of Bill McKibben’s troubling “Rolling Stone” magazine piece titled “The Reckoning,” on global warming. When will people finally “get it” and expel the diabolical, manipulative deniers from our political landscape? I’m not optimistic it’ll happen anytime soon.

According to McKibben, for many years the lonely canary in a rickety, old, backwoods coal mine posted “No Trespassing,” it may already be too late. He lays out some simple, defeatist math concerning U.S. fossil fuels already in storage for intended use. He says if it’s all used, we’re freakin’ cooked, literally. So stop at the newsstand and pick up a copy, fresh cougar bait on the cover, it’ll tell you all you need to know and plenty you’d probably rather not know about the state we’re in, thanks to greedy energy companies and the clever wordsmiths and unethical scientists they employ to mislead the clueless flock. It’s criminal. If you want more, go to 350.org and sign up for email alerts, just so that the crisis threatening the world as we know it stays in plain view. A scholar from the beautiful Champlain Valley college town of Middlebury, Vt. — where I found myself sitting on the common Sunday afternoon — McKibben is from the neighborhood and well worth heeding.

Problem is that McKibben does most of his preaching to the choir, can’t seem to reach lazy mainstream-news hounds who continue to get their daily fix about the coast-to-coast drought ravaging our land, the related wildfires scorching the parched West, without even a faint whiff of the crucial question hovering over the whole crisis: Why? Gee, do you suppose it could have anything to do with the millions of gallons of oil sludge circulating along the deep, dark ocean floor somewhere in the Atlantic following the disastrous 2010 BP Gulf spill? How about Fukushima? Could the poisonous radiation belched into to the atmosphere and puked into the ocean be even partially to blame for this record heat and drought? Sadly, if you’re looking for a culpability analysis, you won’t find it on the nightly news or morning paper. No sir. If it’s the truth you seek, you must search alternative sources, be they cutting-edge blogs or other online news sources, or secondary publications like “Mother Jones,” “The Nation,” “Rolling Stone” or “Orion,” that literary gem few know of. If you can believe it, even Al Jazeera covered the Gulf spill and Fukushima back in the day better than Associated Press, and it’s not like Arabs have no energy interests to protect.

It reminds me of the old days, before the Internet and 24/7 cable news stations, when you had to read “Ramparts” or I.F. Stone or, again, “Rolling Stone,” if you wanted to know what was going on in Vietnam, at Kent State or on the city streets of San Francisco, LA and Chicago. It’s the same, tired old story today, with the courts, the cops and the mainstream press fighting hard to protect the status quo while lonely, altruistic voices like McKibben sound Paul Revere’s alarm to deaf ears of loyalist “sheeple” waving their flags made in Taiwan, singing praise of “true patriots” like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hanitty, prime-time gasbags for the Rupert Murdoch/Roger Ailes propaganda machine. Yes indeed, history repeats itself and will likely continue doing so until it all comes to a hot, fiery grand finale, by which time it’ll be pointless even to say, “I told you so.”

Which I guess brings us right back where we started, to the concept of basic human curiosity. Those who are curious today can find answers easier than back in the Sixties and early Seventies. Problem is that intellectual and philosophical curiosity have been suffocated in debt, which leaves middle-class college graduates with no freedom to explore or travel or figure out precisely who they are before settling down to own a home, raise a family and punch the clock; better still, blast away with an assault rifle at a movie theater. There’s just no time for floating and free thinking these days, only immense pressure to quickly plug into a “good job,” which these days translates to one that pays well, not necessarily makes you happy. What we end up with is a flock of expressionless automatons, what Orwell and Upton Sinclair and many others called wage slaves, even if some of the jobs do bring a livable wage and financial security, albeit for a job you either hate or, to perform it, must hang your conscience on the hallway coat rack.

No matter what McKibben and others of his honorable ilk say, I sense I’m going to miss the day of reckoning. Yeah, I know the salmon and the Pocumtucks have already vanished, and soon Franklin County sugarbush will follow the same tragic path. I truly believe I will live to see the day when the nostalgic sight of steaming springtime sugar shacks will require a drive north. It’s an image that makes me think of my grandsons. I’m convinced they’ll taste global-warming horror. For that I feel diluted guilt and a pure rage, because we could have prevented it with curiosity, activism and rejection of capitalist greed that benefits few and leaves the rest of us sucking filthy wind the press assures us meets acceptable government health standards, whatever that means.

All I know is that Mother Earth has taken ill, greed’s to blame and the culprits would fight another civil war to prevent change. Activists tried to foster change in the Sixties, got squashed and are now following our salmon and indigenous tribesmen to a lonely place called Oblivion. Just bang a hard right at the four-corners to Doom, and drill, Baby, drill.

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